William J. Bennett, in his book The Broken Hearth—a book first about the siege that has befallen the American family and, second, about the matchless benefits marriage bestows on individuals and society as a whole—provides a summary of his comments about cohabitation:

To sum up: Widespread cohabitation delivers, in practice, nothing of what it promises in theory. To the contrary, it undermines lasting attachments, mutual obligations, successful child-rearing, and sexual fidelity. It undermines those precious things themselves, and it undermines our belief in them. What it offers instead is a kind of institutionalized adolescence: a dream of free love freely bestowed, a love relying solely on the springs of mutual emotion and independent of the legal and other constraints imposed by state and society and their surrogates in the form of traditional family arrangements.

It is a pretty enough dream—even if, like many an adolescent dream, fundamentally irresponsible. The only hitch is that in actual experience it has led directly to injury upon injury upon injury.

Source: W. J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family (New York: Doubleday [a division of Random House, Inc.]), 2001, p. 81.

1		Do you have any friends or family members who would offer evidence (personal experience) of the injuries that cohabitation can provide?
2		To what extent is the freedom to leave a partner at any time-the freedom cohabitation provides—a freedom you would trade for the deep intimacy, commitment, and mutual support that marriage provides?
3		Do you believe that cohabitation is simply "institutionalized adolescence," or do you believe this is simply a label attached to it by those who disagree with it?
4		Do you believe that the state has any business interfering in people's private lives, curtailing their freedom of personal action, and regulating their domestic arrangements? Should these decisions be left to individuals alone with no interference from the state?